


Darcy and Jane Shenanigans

by Zephrbabe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: 'mutual dumping' my ass, For Science!, Gen, Laboratories, Mad Science, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Pre-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Science Bros, Team Rainbow Bridge, experiments gone awry, inadvisable competitions, poor lab safety
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2018-11-12 16:23:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11165577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zephrbabe/pseuds/Zephrbabe
Summary: Various ficlets where Dr. Foster and her plucky assistant get into trouble. Or avoid trouble. Or trouble finds them.





	1. Why Does This Always Happen to Us, Jane?

“Ugh, this isn’t accurate _at all,_ ” Darcy whined.

Jane gave her some epic side-eye while adjusting a dial on the machine, but said nothing. The _I told you so_ rang clearly between them without ever passing Jane’s lips.

“It’s supposed to be _sunny_ in California. And warm! Why is it so dang windy? I can no longer feel my toes, Jane, and it is _July_.” They were setting up on a lawn at the edge of the Bay, too, so “windy” was sort of an understatement.

“It’s San Francisco, Darce. It’s always like this in July.”

_We talked about this_ also sounded in the middle of Jane’s silence as she keyed in something on the computer.

And they had talked about it. Jane’s mom had moved to San Francisco for five years when Jane was seven, so Jane knew what San Francisco weather was like. But Darcy had been optimistic, and had packed sundresses and sandals even though Jane told her she’d need layers. In July.

“When Thor and the other Avengers were here, the weather was super nice! All the news footage was blue skies and sunshine.”

“That was in December. It’s always sunny then.” Jane rapped the side of the do-hickey she was going to be taking readings from. “Not warm, but definitely sunny.”

Darcy _hmph_ ed. In order to retain feeling in her arms, she had been forced to purchase a fleece-lined windbreaker from a tourist kiosk for an exorbitant price. Everything in the little shop had been Avengers-themed. Even though the Avengers’ last visit to San Francisco had resulted in the Transamerica Pyramid becoming the Truncated Pyramid, they were still quite popular here. This meant that the back of Darcy’s new jacket was a cartoon in positively garish colors of the six original Avengers hugging the Golden Gate Bridge, with a cheerful rictus on every one of their heroic, badly-drawn faces. It was horrifying.

She kind of loved it.

The kiosk had only had Avengers-print leggings in kid sizes, otherwise she would be toasty warm instead of being able to feel every icy gust of July wind against the backs of her knees and up her skirt. A distraction was needed, and maybe some scalding-hot coffee.

“What readings are we taking again?”

Jane didn’t look up from the whatchamahoosit she was wiring into a makeshift electrical panel that ran back to the van. Her nose was pink and shiny, and she seemed like she was eager to get out of the wind as well, even though she was bundled in most of the winter gear she’d had in Puente Antiguo.

Jane handed Darcy the last of the tripod-looking things, and Darcy hustled to jam it in place while her friend started her technical description of the evening’s events. She caught “base-line levels,” “radiation,” “intradimensional,” and something that sounded like “morphology” but probably wasn’t. In her defense, it was very windy, and she was barely listening.

Which was why, when Jane plugged the last cable into the city power (thank you, Stark Foundation grant!), Darcy was not expecting there to be a flash of light and the ominous scent of juniper.

“What in the Nine Realms?” she screeched, reeling back a bit and pressing her fingers to her eyes to stop the strobing aftereffects.

“That should not have happened.”

“No shit, Sherlock! I thought you said we were only taking readings!”

“We _are_ only taking readings. There’s no way my equipment did this,” Jane waved her hand in agitation. She waved her hand right at the lightly steaming, naked man crouched in the center of all of Jane’s specialized, home-made science junk. And he was naked. In San Francisco. In July.

Darcy reached for the taser in her bag, never taking her eyes off the new guy. Out of the corner of her mouth, she whispered, “Are you sure we didn’t just summon the Terminator?”

Jane was trying to type commands into her laptop without looking away from their party-crasher. “The Terminator isn’t real, Darcy,” came the firm, quiet rejoinder.

“A few years ago, aliens weren’t real, boss.”

Jane’s fiery glare was aimed briefly but palpably towards her assistant. “Human-looking robots being sent from the future is _not_ a real thing. There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this- this unexpectedly naked man to have appeared in the middle of my experiment.”

They both looked at the figure, who was visibly sucking in deep breaths but remained curled protectively over his knees.

“I guess it’s not _that_ weird to see random naked dudes in this city,” Darcy allowed. “Though they’re not usually this cut.” Now that the initial surprise had worn off but the adrenaline hadn’t, she was a bit tempted to pull out her phone and take a few snaps of her second first contact for, y'know, posterity. But that’d mean letting go of her taser, and she wasn’t _that_ tempted.

“We should probably ask if he needs help…”

“Yeah, or find out if he has any plans for world domination.” Darcy’s eyebrows rose when she heard Jane’s scoff. “Hey, I’m not getting nearly killed by an alien megalomaniac again, no matter how nice his butt is.”

Back to the wind and her hair waving in her face, Darcy started towards the arrival, her taser loosely held by her side. She wasn’t feeling too freaked out, but if this guy made any sudden moves…

Jane only hissed, “Darcy!” as her assistant crept steadily forward. Jane had her phone out and was texting her old SHIELD contact. Maybe she’d call the cops for good measure. San Francisco PD was  used to dealing with weird shit by now, right?

Unfortunately, the new arrival did make a sudden move. When Darcy was ten feet away, their mystery guest abruptly straightened from his crouch. Without a conscious thought, her taser was up, aimed, and fired dead center.

Nothing happened.

For a second, Darcy was overcome with the cold dread of having a weapon malfunction in the face of danger. She could feel the electricity buzzing in her hand, though, so she flipped a switch with her thumb and pressed the trigger again.

The guy went down like a felled tree, stiff-limbed and twitching.

Darcy stepped a little closer, just to make sure he was still breathing. Definitely that, and not so she could cop an ogle. He _was_ breathing, but it looked pretty painful, thank you very much.

“How many milliamps did you just put through that guy?” Jane called from behind the safety of her laptop.

“A hundred.”

“A hundred?! Were you _trying_ to kill him?” Jane’s voice was edging closer, but Darcy wasn’t willing to look away from the prone man still lightly twitching.

“Chillax, boss-lady. I had to use the super-switch.” The wind had died down briefly, and she could hear Jane’s boots in the wet grass. “The ‘normal people’ setting didn’t even tickle him.”

“I can’t believe someone got you a black-market taser that can take down supers,” Jane mumbled. Darcy jumped slightly as Jane edged up behind her and peered around her still-extended arm.

“Yeah, best Yule present ever.”

Darcy spared her boss an eyebrow wiggle, so saw the moment Jane’s brow furrowed and her eyes widened, her own eyes watering a little in the sharp gusts coming off the Bay.

“Wait. I know this guy.”


	2. Darcy is Not a Fan of Astrophysicists on the Whole

Fuck conferences. Just fuck ‘em. They were boring, the food was terrible, and they made Jane sad, because astrophysicists were like the popular girls in high school and apparently really liked to throw around words like “crackpot,” “inconclusive,” and “untested.”

Astrophysicists were the worst.

It was maybe a little unfair to paint them all with the same brush, but even the ones who didn’t try to tear Jane down had never said a word in her defense. So fuck 'em.

They could crow about their conclusions on binary star systems and measuring early-universe gamma radiation and compare the length of their ~~dicks~~ hyper-powerful telescopes or whatever, but not a one of them had helped, encouraged, or peer-reviewed Jane’s work. Except for Dr. Selvig, but he was in Peru, taking readings and wearing sarongs like a boss.

What all this meant was that one Darcy Lewis was stuck in a very nice hotel with a bunch of assholes who were trying to figure out how to eat crow and patronize Jane at the same time. Darcy could see that her physicist was vibrating with a deadly combination of jetlag, over-caffeination, smugness, and righteous rage. Darcy was uncomfortably aware that her boss was either about to punch someone, burst into tears, or start doing that supervillain cackle that Darcy had only heard once and never wanted to hear again.

And it was only the opening cocktail party.

Fuck conferences, seriously.


	3. I Shall Do Science to It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Opening line/title from one of my favorite comic artists, Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak. Check out his amazingly-drawn pro-science action comic with a weird genius woman as the protagonist!

“I shall do science to it.”

Darcy glanced up from her data entry and frowned. Jane was staring at a brown sugar Pop Tart as though it contained the mysteries of the universe.

“Aw, Janey, no.”

The last time Jane had got it in her mad genius head to experiment with a food item, they’d had to shut down the lab for eight days for repairs, and Stark’s previous lab manager had screamed and cried a bit and quit. Darcy’s favorite sweater still smelled vaguely of caraway.

“I am not going through this again, Jane,” Darcy whined. “You _know_ I could never look a ham sandwich in the face again.”

Luckily, Jane’s imminent exhaustion-fueled insanity (and Darcy’s subsequent food-related misery) was interrupted by a small grappling claw dropping from the ceiling directly in front of Jane’s face, neatly grasping her still-warm toaster pastry, and retreating into the open vent.

The vent cover slid back into place without a sound.

Jane, stricken, stared from the vent to Darcy.

Showing no mercy, Darcy shut down her computer, and hauled Jane out of her seat. “C'mon, boss-lady. We are past-due for a meal with actual nutritional value,” she caught a whiff of herself, “and showers.”

“Sounds good,” Jane replied. They’d definitely been working too long if Jane didn’t put up any resistance. Then again, food experimentation was at the extreme end of Dr. Foster’s energy capacity.

They were almost all the way to the elevators, debating what kind of food they wanted from the canteen, when Darcy darted back into the lab. She cast a thumbs-up at the ceiling, “Thanks, Clint! You’re a lifesaver!”

She was gone by the time the vent answered, “I just really like the brown sugar ones.”


	4. Strut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane probably wishes she hadn't said anything...

Jane was squinting at something besides a napkin-equation or her lunch. Darcy had just assembled the perfect balance of cheese and pasta on her fork, and therefore really didn’t want to know what could distract her boss from one of the top three most important meals of the day. Except… what the heck would catch Jane’s attention like that? They were sitting outside the second-floor canteen, with the same lush, dull view of trees they had almost every day. Upstate New York was mostly lush, dull trees, Darcy felt.

Jane had the slight scowl and creased brow that Darcy thought of as her there-had-better-be-a-good-reason-for-this face. It was the one Jane got whenever she dealt with challenging physics setbacks, truculent Asgardians, or chauvinistic department heads. Darcy’s curiosity was piqued, but she was reluctant to ask the cause, just in case it meant she had to abandon her mac ‘n’ cheese.

Jane blurted, “What is going on with his gait?”

“His what?” Darcy swiveled in her seat, immediately spotting who her boss was referring to.

“He’s walking funny.”

“Oh, yeah.” She took a moment to watch the man in question stalk across the courtyard below them, passing from the shadow of the building into full sun, heading Odin-knew-where. “The internet calls that his ‘murder strut.'”

Jane tipped her head to the side and swallowed her mouthful of sandwich. “Is he going to murder someone?”

“Probably not. It’s, like, a military thing or something? I think he just sort of gets in the zone and doesn’t realize he’s doing it.”

“You mean the zone where he is a highly trained assassin with PTSD and faster reflexes than basically anyone here?”

Darcy eyed Jane a bit. She hadn’t thought her boss had been listening during the briefing last week. Jane had been proofreading calculations instead of perusing the provided material. Darcy had not only read the material, she had _asked questions._

“Good point.” Deliberately, she set down her fork, and leaned over the glass barrier of the commissary’s outdoor balcony until he was in her proverbial sights again. “Hey, Barnes!”

Barnes paused his stride, his head swiveling up towards them unerringly. Jane grabbed the back of Darcy’s sweater as she tipped herself further forward and called down, “You planning on murdering anyone?”

From this distance, Barnes seemed nonplussed. Of course, most people he interacted with probably avoided asking this question directly. To his face. Never let it be said that Darcy Lewis was “most people.”

“No?”

“You sure about that, sport?” Darcy rested her elbow on the narrow, hard railing and propped up her chin.

“Yes?”

“That didn’t sound too sure there, buddy. You looked like you were a man on a mission,” Darcy was grinning, “so to speak.”

He looked down, along his original trajectory. There was always the chance he’d walk off; he certainly tended to brush off most of the R&D team members unless they were asking him to test new weapons. Barnes had come to the facility with a reputation for brusqueness that hadn’t altered with prolonged exposure.

After a beat, during which Jane failed to haul Darcy back over the railing by her collar, Barnes turned his face back up to them with a smirk worthy of the “panty-dropping” designation agreed upon by generations of high school girls drooling over their history textbooks.

He shaded his eyes with a silvery hand, and called up, “Got anyone in mind, doll?”


	5. Jane's Take on Conferences is Decidedly Different

Conferences were the best.

Not only were the accommodations luxurious, the food plentiful, and had an endless supply of quality coffee, but Jane got to rub her success in the face of all the dipshits who had doubted her.

She could now critique their inelegant equations _to their faces_ , and watch their carefully-constructed theories and egos crash down around them. Oh, you think you found a green dwarf star? Your doctoral fellow was napping at the controls and had to make up data. You have evidence of the closest Earth-like planet yet discovered? You actually forgot to carry the ten, and all your calculations are wrong. Convinced alien life is out there? Too late, Jane already discovered it. And dated it.

One of the best parts was that astrophysicists who had been marginalized even longer than Jane had been were coming out of the woodwork to rally behind her. Someone was making noise about starting a journal for women in the field. Someone else was making noise about starting the Foster Fellowship (because you know Tony Stark, right? He _loves_ science). Someone else was straight-up making noise.

“Neil deGrasse Tyson is at this conference, Jane! Neil fucking deGrasse Tyson! Neil deGrasse _I-will-pick-apart-all-the-shitty-physics-of-your-movie-in-140-characters-or-less_ Tyson!” Darcy might have throttled Jane with her badge lanyard, she was so excited.

The highlight of any conference was watching Darcy geek out over scientists. The woman spent more time reading the industry journals than Jane did. If _Astronomy and Astrophysics_ had pull-out posters like a teen magazine, Darcy would have them plastered on the wall in her bedroom.

So, while munching on the fanciest house-made toaster pastries she'd ever eaten, drinking her body weight in Ethiopian espresso, conspiring with new physics sisters, and witnessing Darcy loosing her shit over being in the same room as Peter Higgs, Jane Foster got her just desserts:

Jane got to crush her enemies, see them backtrack their criticisms, and hear the lamentation of their grad minions.

Conferences were the best.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points for spotting the Conan the Barbarian reference!


	6. Drabble-a-Thon Day 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Fuck Yeah Darcy Lewis Drabble-a-Thon writing challenge.
> 
> The day's prompt: 62%  
> The day's charity: SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) http://www.seti.org/donate
> 
> For your listening pleasure: “Aknot! Wot?” by Eric Serra (from the Fifth Element soundtrack, lol)

“You know this is a terrible idea, right? Like, there is a not-insignificant chance we’ll die?”

“It’s 62%.”

Darcy started. “A 62% chance  _that we’ll die_?”

Jane looked up from the laptop balanced on her knees. “What? No.” She almost turned back to her work, but Darcy’s wheeze of alarm brought her back. “We’re not going to die.”

“You  _just said_  there was a 62% chance-”

“The readings, Darcy. The readings are maxing out at 54%, but my calculations indicate we should be able to get the output up to 62% before-”

“Before  _we die_?”

Jane really looked at Darcy for the first time in a few hours. The woman was even more disheveled than usual during one of their late nights. Her hair was frizzed all over the place, her glasses were askew over dark-circled eyes, and her normally mobile mouth was pressed to a thin line. Darcy was wearing two sweaters; Jane could see the left sleeve of the inner layer sticking out of the bottom. Darcy had a massive travel mug clutched in both hands, and Jane had a terrible suspicion.

“Is that… Darcy, is that the Asgardian tea Thor brought back?”

“What?” Darcy looked down at her mug. “Yeah. It helps me think.”

It did, too; Jane knew that. It helped  _everyone_  think. Thor had served it to them in these beautiful,  _tiny_  tea bowls that Darcy had squeed over.

Jane closed her laptop and set it aside with a gentle movement. She stood slowly, hands moving towards Darcy before she was even close. Darcy was looking at Jane with a lightly furrowed brow.

Softly, she said, “Hey, Darce, I think you’ve had enough tea for today.”

As expected, Darcy drew the mug close to her body and her furrow turned into a glower. “Why?”

“Do you know what day it is?”

“Why are you talking to me like a scared dog? It’s Tuesday.”

Jane took another step closer, but lost the hushed tone. “Ok. In fairness, you had a one-in-seven chance of getting that right.”

Gauging the distance, Jane eased forward another step. “That tea was never meant to be consumed in quantity. Even Asgardians go easy on it. You remember those tiny cups?”

Darcy looked down at her mug. It appeared to be vibrating in her grip. “Oh shit.”

Jane leapt forward and snatched the mug from Darcy’s claw-like hands. Darcy squawked in indignation, but couldn’t snatch it back because Jane tipped it up and chugged the contents.

Slamming the mug top-down on the desk like a shot glass, Jane gave Darcy her most determined glare.

“Oh shit,” Darcy breathed.

Jane picked up her laptop and turned back to her work. “Now  _neither_  of us are going to sleep for the next long while. So we are going to get this machine up to 62% output if it’s the last thing we do.”

“We are  _so_  going to die.”


	7. Drabble-a-Thon Day 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Fuck Yeah Darcy Lewis Drabble-a-Thon
> 
> The day's prompt: Boundaries  
> The day's charity: Association of Women in Science (AWIS) https://awis.site-ym.com/donations/donate.asp?id=8174

 

"Darcy, why is your desk surrounded by duct tape?” Selvig asked with a certain reluctance. He’d only been back with Jane for a few weeks, and he’d learned how much he’d forgotten while under Loki’s influence. Specifically, how odd Jane’s intern could be.

“Oh, it’s not just my desk, doc,” Darcy answered without looking up from her work, “I’ve got perimeters set up at fifty, one, and two hundred feet, too.”

She was mashing away at her keyboard, head bopping along to whatever was piping through her single earbud. She glanced at Erik and shot him a thumbs up, which he accurately assumed meant  _good job remembering to wear pants_. Darcy was a supporter of whatever kind of clothes he felt like wearing, as long as he was covered. She’d grumbled something about “never-nudes” the last time she’d caught him in the throes of scientific discovery.

“ _Why?_ ”

Holding up a finger, Darcy said, “Advanced warning system.”

Then she laid her finger alongside her nose, and tapped.

“Oh, hi, Erik!” Jane emerged from underneath a piece of equipment in time to see Erik’s bewildered look. “Oh, is she talking about her ring-around-the-deskie?”

“I told you not to call it that!” Darcy whined. “It’s a sophisticated boundary line that the building’s AI is helping me defend.”

Erik turned to Jane for help. He wished he’d never put on pants this morning.

“She’s in the middle of a Nerf war with Agent Barton.” Jane wiped her hands on a rag, and slugged back a mug of cold coffee. She shrugged, “I’m pretty sure he’s an Avenger-”

“-they call him Hawkeye,” Darcy interjected.

“-so she needs all the help she can get.”

Beginning to see the picture, and carefully ignoring the fractured recollections of his days working with Clint Barton, Erik let the two women bicker.

“I am  _not_ cheating. We  _agreed_  to each have a safe zone. It’s not my fault Clint didn’t think this through.”

Jane rolled her eyes with affection, though there were dark circles, too. He’d have to gently remind Jane that she wasn’t one of her machines. “I don’t know how you think making your desk your ‘home base’ is kosher, when you spend all your time here. Also, you got the building to give you a warning when Barton steps within one of the boundary lines.”

Darcy tipped up her chin until her weight leaned back her office chair, and she was bent at a precarious angle. Not even bothering to hide her smug tone, she said, “Yes. Yes, I did.”

A Nerf dart hit her in the throat.

Coughing and cursing she shout-rasped, “What the fuck, Clint?!”

A disembodied voice offered, “You crossed your own line, Darce.”

Darcy sat up, and gingerly rubbed her throat. She lifted a middle finger to the ceiling vents and, with a chipper smile, said, “Avenger or not, just see if I don’t revoke cookie privileges for making a throat shot.”

“Aww, Darce, no.”


	8. Drabble-a-Thon Day 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Fuck Yeah Darcy Lewis Drabble-a-Thon
> 
> The day's prompt: Maybes  
> The day's charity: [Casa de las Madres](https://www.lacasa.org/help/give/donate)

 

There was a familiar frustrated banging coming from the back of the machine shop; Jane recognized the dulcet  _clong_ s of the microgravitational analyzer being beat on, since she beat on it so often herself. The angry cussing from her assistant was new, though.

It was past the time Darcy’s boyfriend usually stopped by with a muffin for ‘the science hotties.’ Darcy was probably just hangry.

“Maybe you should take a break, Darcy…”

Darcy emerged from the part of the lab they’d designated as a construction zone, a fist on one hip and the broken analyzer on the other. “What is with everybody and all these god damn 'maybes’ today?!”

Jane took one look at Darcy’s livid expression and said, “What are you talking about.”

“Tony, Alex from Accounting, you, Jonathan. 'Maybe it’s time for a vacation, Darcy.’ 'Maybe you’d like a salad today, Darcy.’ 'Maybe you should take a break, Darcy.'” She paused, fiddling with the analyzer, and Jane saw her gather herself to finish; only a strangled whisper emerged, “'Maybe we shouldn’t see each other anymore, Darcy.'”


	9. It's Probably a Plasma Cannon

“I told you this was a bad idea,” Jane hissed to Darcy as they crouched in a service closet. **  
**

“No, you said that if I survived, I’d be lauded as a genius for all time,” Darcy hissed back.

Jane stared at her through the gloom, cocooned as they were by boxes of paper and office supplies. Jane’s eyes narrowed and her mouth opened.

There was a distant explosion. Dust and paper clips rained down on them.

“I’m not sure how you got ‘genius for all time’ from ‘terrible idea.’”

“You are so lucky I haven’t acquired any superpowers yet,” Darcy grumbled, trying to shake plaster bits out of her hair.

“This would be so much easier if you had,” Jane growled, shifting the equipment around them. Jane peeked out of the closet, hoping for either the good guys signaling the all clear, or at least no bad guys waiting to shoot them.

The hall outside their lab- Darcy and Jane had learned not to hide in the closets  _in_ the lab- was full of debris and corpses. The closest body was far enough that Jane couldn’t tell how they had died, which was still plenty close.

“Any heaving-bosomed superheroes and/or plucky lab techs out there waiting to rescue us?”

“Nope,” Jane said, drawing her head back into the closet.

“Oh good,” Darcy nodded, snapping a fresh cartridge into her taser.

Jane hefted the weapon they’d cobbled together during the last invasion. It was ungainly- Stark would have a conniption if he saw it- and nearly doubled Jane’s weight. 

Holding the long nozzle down at her hip with both hands, Jane let Darcy pull the closet door open and lead the way out into the hall. She felt as though they were leaving safety, but it was only the illusion of safety, after all.


	10. Lightning and Electronics Don't Mix

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post Thor: Ragnarok, so maybe spoilers?   
> Takes place when (and if) the Asgardian ship makes it to Earth, which I'm not sure of (but couldn't resist this anyway).

“I’m not letting you recalibrate the emitter, Darcy. Not after last time.” Jane was head-first in the maintenance port of the emitter, which had a fancier name that they’d agreed was only to impress the snobs who wrote the grant checks.

“You said it was _supposed_ to light up,” Darcy whined from Jane’s elbow, ready to hand her the soldering iron.

“Yeah, _light up_ , not catch on fire. We smelled like mad science for two days.”

Darcy winced, and had to admit that the scorched smell of electronics did tend to linger in the hair.

“In my defense,” she started, taking the fried hard drive from Jane’s blindly outstretched hand, “we did determine that it was a combination of whatever I messed up and a ‘mysterious’ power surge.”

Darcy watched Jane freeze for a moment, and didn’t resist a smug grin. Her suspicions were almost confirmed, and there was not a snowball’s chance in Muspelheim that she wasn’t going to tease her boss about it.

“Huh. I wonder what could have caused a power surge so late at night, while you were _all alone_ in the labs. Or should I say _who_?” Darcy noted- with unmitigated glee- that the back of Jane’s neck was turning pink. Darcy handed her the fresh hard drive and continued, “What localized weather phenomenon could explain our triple-protected system getting overloaded? Some sort of sudden electrici-”

“ _Darcy_.”

Darcy didn’t stop, “It can’t _possibly_ have anything to do with the sudden reappearance of an ex who _\- may I remind you, Jane-_ can shoot lightning out of his-”

“ _Oh my god_ , Darcy.” Jane backed out of the emitter at speed, cheeks bright red, guilty glare dialed to Adjunct-Professor-denigrates-thesis-as-fantastical level. “Thor was barely here-”

Darcy waved the soldering iron in the air with a crow of triumph. “AHA! I knew it!” She leveled Jane a gimlet stare, “I thought he dumped you. For space.”

Jane flailed a little, not meeting Darcy’s eyes. “He didn’t _dump me._ It was a- a _mutual_ dumping.”

“Is that why you’ve been moping in your apartment the past year and a half, and called emergency margarita nights every Thursday for two months after you…’mutually dumped’ each other?” 

Darcy grinned at the glare Jane leveled her. 

Darcy slurped down the last of her macchiato, and grimaced at the stale taste. “At least tell me it was worth messing up the emitter, doc,” she joked.

Jane’s face turned crimson, but then she got this unfocused, pleased look that had Darcy waving her arms in negation before Jane got her mouth open.

“ _Oh, no_. No. Nyet, Jane. I got enough of that look after London. And DC. And Sokovia. And-”

The boss-lady’s blush wasn’t going away any time soon, but that didn’t stop her from coming back, “Oh _really_? You mean I haven’t totally seen you make that face around a certain-”

Darcy gasped and lunged to clap her hand over Jane’s mouth. “That is _classified_ , Jane.” 

Jane’s eyebrow rose, and it was Darcy’s turn to blush.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who do you think Darcy's "classified" lover is?

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [Tumblr!](http://zephrbabe.tumblr.com/)


End file.
